This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and General Assembly Democrats painted divergent pictures of the future health of Virginia's economy and finances at dueling presentations Thursday.
"I believe that we are positioned to see long-term economic opportunity that we may not have ever seen before in America, other than in [the] early days of the Industrial Revolution," Youngkin told reporters after presenting an annual review of Virginia's fiscal health. (Between 1900 and 1920, per capita income growth in Virginia went up by about 15% per year. In fiscal year 2025, total personal income went up by 5.1%.)
Finance Secretary Steve Cummings went into more detail on the commonwealth's finances and faced questions from the Democrats that control the General Assembly.
"While you might think the commonwealth is strong, there's a whole lot of red flags on the horizon," Sen. Majority Leader Scott Surovell told Cummings. Surovell (D–Fairfax) pointed to higher producer costs and increasing unemployment rates, particularly in Northern Virginia.
There may be some truth to both approaches. The University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center had predicted an economic slowdown earlier this year. Another report, released Thursday, said "the economic slowdown will happen later than expected, as Virginia sectors show signs of resilience and many federal measures were postponed or delayed."
Cummings said in his presentation that a hiring freeze was responsible for the downward trend of Virginians working in federal jobs. Of an 80,000-job reduction in the federal workforce, 11,200 are in the commonwealth.
But the heart of the conflicting sentiments is how federal policies are affecting Virginians. Cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, officially called SNAP, are set to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars in new benefit and administrative costs for the state.
Youngkin still has one more biennial budget to write, although it will be handed off to his successor, who is likely to scrap it in favor of her own spending priorities.
He said he'd address Medicaid and SNAP in that next budget, which would take effect on DATE and last until DATE. By Republicans' own estimates, at least tens of thousands of Virginians would be pushed off of Medicaid due to President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the federal tax bill passed in July.
Congressional Democrats have put that number at 322,000, based off of the Congressional Budget Office. Many others would see their health insurance premiums rise — some as high as 20%.
Payroll taxes were up 5% and sales taxes were up 2.2%. Other economic indicators were beating expectations too. Gross state product was 2.6% versus the forecast 1.5%.
Youngkin said those figures meant his policies were working and would strengthen state finances.
"My friends, over the past three and a half years, we have been on an amazing journey together," Youngkin said in one of his last official speeches on Virginia's finances. "While pride is a bad thing, I have to say, I'm proud of the progress that we have made together."
The conflicting sentiment even reached into sources of hard data.
Del. Candi Mundon-King (D–Prince WIlliam) questioned whether federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data was sound after Trump fired the agency's commissioner earlier this month, calling the downward trending numbers "rigged." And Del. Vivian Watts (D–Fairfax) expressed concern that certain accounting practices were inflating the commonwealth's surplus.
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